Use CONCATENATE, one of the text functions, to join two or more text strings into one string.

Important: In Excel 2016, Excel Mobile, and Excel Online, this function has been replaced with the CONCAT function. Although the CONCATENATE function is still available for backward compatibility, you should consider using CONCAT from now on. This is because CONCATENATE may not be available in future versions of Excel.

Creates a sentence by joining the data in column A with other text. The result is Stream population for brook trout species is 32/mile.

=CONCATENATE(B2, " ", C2)

Joins three things: the string in cell B2, a space character, and the value in cell C2. The result is Andreas Hauser.

=CONCATENATE(C2, ", ", B2)

Joins three things: the string in cell C2, a string with a comma and a space character, and the value in cell B2. The result is Andreas, Hauser.

=CONCATENATE(B3, " & ", C3)

Joins three things: the string in cell B3, a string consisting of a space with ampersand and another space, and the value in cell C3. The result is Fourth & Pine.

=B3 & " & " & C3

Joins the same items as the previous example, but by using the ampersand (&) calculation operator instead of the CONCATENATE function. The result is Fourth & Pine.

Common Problems

Problem

Description

Quotation marks appear in result string.

Use commas to separate adjoining text items. For example: Excel will display =CONCATENATE("Hello ""World") as Hello"World with an extra quote mark because a comma between the text arguments was omitted.

Numbers don't need to have quotation marks.

Words are jumbled together.

Without designated spaces between separate text entries, the text entries will run together. Add extra spaces as part of the CONCATENATE formula. There are two ways to do this: